Random Thoughts and Observations

• Started reading Miranda Green's Symbol and Image in Celtic Religious Art on the bus this morning, and found a quote from one of my other favourite authors- Jorge Luis Borges:
  "In the earliest of times, which were so susceptible to vague speculations and the inevitable ordering of the universe, there can have existed no division between the poetic and the prosaic. Everything must have been tinged with magic. Thor was not the god of Thunder; he was the thunder and the god."


• Taking the bus to and from work takes approximately an hour (ten or more minutes of which are waiting between buses) each way. This is a drastic improvement over the hour and fifteen minutes to three hours it took before we moved. It's also much less stressful. I sit back and listen to music and read- today was the aforementioned Miranda Green tome and The Cure.


• There was a pre-Iron Age Celtic tribe, living in what is today France south of Nantes, west of Limoges- essentially south of the R. Loire- called the Pictones (after Anon, Die Kelten in Mitteleuropa). Haven't yet managed to piece together a connection between this tribe and the Pictii, of the area roughly above Hadrian's Wall in Scotland and ranging down the western coast (the Midlothians, Argyllshire, etc. have many of the standing stones and inscriptions attributed to the Picts; and a curious blending of Gaelic and Welsh-sounding place names). It's a matter of debate amongst the academics what language this people spoke, but looking at the place names in the region, it may have been Celtic, before the division into the P- and Q-Celtic derivatives which led to the Goedelic and Brythonic language branches. Regardless, this suggests more new reading.


• Full paycheques are a nice thing after several of the ones at 75% disability pay. It seems as if there's an extra $400 in the cheque which arrived in the mail yesterday. Must remember to sign up for direct deposit, now that the credit union isn't as accessible.


• For the second time this week, my boss hasn't sent me daily assignments. Fortunately, i have enough projects to work on that i'm not going to worry about focusing specifically on what he's assigning, since evidently he's not concerned enough to assign anything in particular yet today. P'rhaps he's finding micromanaging to be more of a chore than it's worth this week. One can hope, at least.

(no subject)

*sigh*
Just got griped at by my boss again, this time regarding something I did over a week ago. "Why'd you do this? What was the logic here?"
Umm, logic. Let's see. I have files that need to be applied to two different sets of directories, but they have the identical names. So each one got extracted to its own folder so that I could know without spending an extensive amount of time checking exactly which files were relevant to the Arabic version and which belonged to the Hebrew. There's the friggin' logic, asshole. I'm running four different directions at any given time doing all of the scut work on our team, and you demand an explanation for something i did a week ago? Give me a fucking break.
Yes, there is a certain degree of precision which needs to be observed. It was. Past that, it's just like deploying something in the field- get it functional. IT admins aren't going to care if it's pretty, what they care about is that it works for their people. I do something and make it work, and you bitch at me because I didn't read your mind and do it exactly the way you wanted it done but never stated? Give me a break. I'm not a fucking mindreader. In the real world, results are what matters. My work is done correctly. Want it also done to meet a particular cosmetic state? Then make that clear.

And, yes, i did tell him that. Not in exactly those words, but the gist was the same. Gods, please- grant me a Samhain wish- release into a different job. It's a time of transition, and of new beginnings. I'm ready to begin something new.